Month: May 2018

After the Buffalo Bills traded him to the Kansas City Chiefs in late August, 2016 second-round pick Reggie Ragland took some time to recover from a knee injury and adjust to a new environment before eventually playing a significant role at linebacker in November and December.

He’ll now have a better opportunity to get acclimated to the Kansas City defense as he embarks on his first offseason program with the team. And the expectations are high.

Everything is different, Jackson said, per Wyatt. “But it’s cool. I’m learning a new playbook, learning a new style. But I am enjoying it.”

If Jackson is going to make a leap as a sophomore, we might get a feel for it when the Titans hold their first batch of OTAs next week.

As a sophomore with the Washington Redskins in 2017, cornerback Kendall Fuller broke out with four interceptions and 10 passes defensed while earning the fifth-highest qualified grade at the position from Pro Football Focus.

“Like many, I was reluctant about being the featured team on Hard Knocks but once we sat down and talked about it as an organization, I feel a lot better and understand why the time is right,” Dorsey said in a release. “Hue and I both feel like this team is in a good place and that we are in the process of building something that will lead to success. Being a part of Hard Knocks will give our fans the opportunity to see how passionate the people in our building are about winning and how excited we are about getting to work and preparing for the 2018 season.”

Dorsey deserves credit for helping the Browns make moves this offseason, but, likely to his chagrin, he couldn’t keep the team off the show. He’ll probably have to be on the series at some point, and when he does, maybe he’ll play ball. Or even better, maybe he’ll roll his eyes throughout.

I’ve been a part of Hard Knocks and when you experience it first hand, you come to appreciate the inside look it really gives fans, Jackson said in a statement. “We are excited about what we are building within our organization and feel good about the progress we have made this offseason. Being able to bring our fans in so they can get to know our players and our organization in a different way will be a huge positive for us. I want people to see how much our players and coaches care, how hard they work and how badly they want to win for Cleveland. This will be a great opportunity for our team.”

K.J. Malone, the son of basketball Hall of Fame member and NBA legend Karl Malone, has ended his football playing career.

The Golden Knights are Canada’s team because of Gerard Gallant, who is Canadian to the point where he’s from Prince Edward Island. This is a coach whose former non-traditional-market team fired him after a division championship and then made him call a Shame Cab from the arena. Like any true Canadian, Gallant kept his head high, until he lowered it to see the ridiculous check the Knights cut to hire him.

The Golden Knights are Canada’s team because of Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, who [checks notes] was born in Le Blanc-Mesnil, France, but really sort of sounds Canadian, right?

“We loved the opportunity to marry the history and heritage of the 49ers franchise with the modern innovation of our latest football chassis, the Nike Vapor Untouchable uniform,” Nike Art Director of NFL Uniforms Tom Andrich said, via the team’s website . “It was a way to honor the past while representing the future.”

The uniforms feature white jerseys and pants, the drop shadow number, three-stripe sleeve, black and red pant stripes, and a throwback decal on the side of the helmet.

The first pro sports stadium ever to achieve LEED Platinum Certification in the U.S., Mercedes-Benz Stadium touts itself as the most sustainable sports venue in the world. It can power up to 10 Falcons games with the renewable energy generated through its 4,000 solar panels, and it can store more than 2 million gallons of storm water on site to prevent flooding in the area. The stadium also uses 47 percent less water than baseline standards.

Mercedes-Benz Stadium was built next to the Georgia Dome, which was demolished in November. Super Bowl 53 will mark the third time Atlanta has hosted the game. The previous two (1994 and 2000) took place in the Georgia Dome.

The good news for the NFL is that its London fan base is big enough that games at Wembley Stadium sell out quickly. The bad news is there’s a growing perception among the UK fan base that the NFL is a greedy interloper fixated on maximizing profits while pricing out average fans.

“We love the fact we get games here in the UK, but if tickets are ending up on resale sites for £500 [$700] a ticket, fans will opt to save their money and head to America to see the real action,” Fox writes. “Genuine fans are being priced out by greedy individuals and businesses. If this continues, the NFL will see less fans being able to attend games, and in turn fans confidence will be lost when it comes to a franchise.”

The NFL has become popular enough that it can sell out a stadium in London. But it wants to become popular enough to generate big television ratings in the UK. And a perception that it’s catering only to the fans who can afford the expensive tickets at Wembley could hold the league back in the long run.

As one executive whose team was actively evaluating the quarterbacks in the 2018 draft explained it to PFT, if the draft had been held immediately after the college football season ended, Mayfield likely would have been a high second-round pick. It was the work that was done from the middle of January until the end of April that pushed Mayfield to the point where he became the must-have guy.

Browns V.P. of player personnel Alonzo Highsmith recently gushed about Mayfield’s intangibles, and Highsmith wasn’t alone. As the source explained it to PFT, Mayfield blew people away with his demeanor, his words, and his way, once the process of talking to him and interacting with him began.

Enhancing that assessment was the information obtained as scouts learned more about Mayfield from those who had dealt with him in he past. Most prospects kiss the butts of the people they should; Mayfield is among the minority who had a reputation for treating very well the people who couldn’t help him. And that’s a very big deal when it comes to how teams separate one player from another, especially when none of the prospects stand out clearly and obviously above the rest based on physical abilities.

The Panthers added tight end Kent Taylor to their practice squad last December, and he made news two weeks ago when he was suspended for failing a PED test.

He won’t get a chance to add to his Panthers legacy.

Per the league’s official transaction report, the Panthers waived the reserve tight end yesterday. He had signed a futures deal in January, but wasn’t expected to make the regular season roster or anything.

They filled his roster spot by signing tackle Korren Kirven, who had been recently released by the Jets and cleared waivers. The former undrafted free agent from Alabama has spent time with the Buccaneers and Browns as well.

Gase pushed back on the idea that he signed Osweiler — the jettisoned Texans and Browns starter — simply because of their time together in Denver, saying he probably took longer than everybody else to warm up to the idea of adding Brock.

Nacua played in every game for the Browns last season after signing with the team as an undrafted free agent out of BYU. He made three starts at safety, played 139 special teams snaps and finished the year with 14 tackles.

With Tony Jefferson and Eric Weddle still on hand at safety, Nacua will vie for a reserve/special teams role with Baltimore. Sixth-round pick DeShon Elliott will be among the players competing with Nacua for playing time.

It’s been more than six months since Bears tight end Zach Miller nearly lost his leg after he seemingly came down with an incredible touchdown catch against the Saints, only to have that touchdown overturned due to an official review that never really made complete sense. Six months later, Saints coach Sean Payton has admitted that Miller, now a free agent, did indeed catch that football and should’ve been rewarded with a touchdown.

When Bills president Russ Brandon stepped down/was pushed out yesterday after an investigation of inappropriate workplace relationships with women, a release said that Kim Pegula was taking over as team president of the Bills and Sabres.

She apparently intends to stay on the job.

On the right, the more reasonably clothed Northwestern University cheerleaders at an opening-week game in 2014 (the author of this article is fourth from the left).

More If NFL cheerleaders are no longer objectified, teams will have no reason to hold women to unhealthy body standards.

Both Davis and Ware say they were subjected to weekly weigh-ins to make sure they were at or below the weight they had auditioned at.

(Through counsel, the Saints said they have never required cheerleaders to submit to weekly weigh-ins.) Ware says many teams, like the Dolphins, had a three-pound leniency rule.

Given the stated importance of the new helmet rule, why wouldn’t the NFL allow missed ejections that would have been subject to replay review to be imposed via replay review? Thus, a de facto targeting rule will become the next logical step as the very broad lowering-the-helmet rule adopted secretly last month by the NFL’s owners becomes shaped and contoured by an even less transparent process that trades debate for mandate, and that risks fundamentally altering pro football as we know it.

This year was Ward’s first as a full-time starter at OSU (he played behind 2017 first-round picks Marshon Lattimore and Gareon Conley in 2016, and ’16 first-rounder Eli Apple, Conley and others in ’15), and he ascended through the season, which was key.

And while the NFL universally loved Chubb, he was never athletically seen like Myles Garrett was last year or Jadeveon Clowney was four years ago, part of why Ward was given a better shot to be truly elite at his position.

But Roethlisberger and the other bruised berries aren’t really daring to be honest and open. They are being almost cowardly when they communicate through riddles, rumors, sly suggests and zingers. They have the power and job security to be blunt, but they would rather be coy and invite the kind of attention and speculation that they pretend to hate.

Rodgers can state, flat-out, that he wants to have a say in Packers personnel decisions. Flacco can acknowledge that he’s in professional peril and that his only recourse is to get to work. Roethlisberger can mark the territory around his locker without going out of his way to wreck a rookie’s first week in the NFL.

Le’Veon Bell never gets a guarantee that extends beyond the franchise tag, but Roethlisberger feels free to get territorial about a third-round pick. Brady makes cryptic remarks at events that sound like settings in Tom Wolfe novels while the Patriots trade away his backup, a potential franchise quarterback, and then pick the least-threatening quarterbacks on the draft board to assure him that he’s still their one and only.

Even among NFL royalty, these quarterbacks are more royal than most, which makes it really off-putting when they get petulant about the tiniest setback or slight.

Quarterbacks on the Roethlisberger-Brady-Rodgers tier are paid not just to win games, but also to represent our highest ideals of professionalism and leadership. That’s why team execs throw around phrases like face of the franchise, why Ryan’s very-good-but-not-great play is worth a $100 million guarantee (his extreme corporate blandness is considered an asset) and why independent-minded prospects like Josh Rosen give old-school football guys the willies. Teams don’t want their quarterbacks to be about anything except winning the next football game.

Yankees righty Domingo German had a no hitter going through six innings against the Indians on Sunday at Yankee Stadium.

But manager Aaron Boone pulled him before the seventh inning, putting in reliever Dellin Betances with the score knotted at 0-0.

Lawmakers had been pushing last month for more access to a handful of cables and other CIA material that might shed more light on Haspel’s work. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the more material she reads about Haspel’s role in the interrogation program, including the destruction of tapes, the more unsettled she has become.

Last month, the CIA declassified an internal disciplinary review that found no fault with the performance of Haspel in the destruction of the videotapes. Haspel drafted a cable approving the destruction that her boss ultimately sent to field officers, who fed the tapes into a shredding machine. But she believed that he would first get the approval of senior CIA leaders before sending it, according to people with knowledge of the episode.

The release of the disciplinary review may persuade some lawmakers who had been undecided to support Haspel, said congressional officials tracking the nomination process.

LAST APPEARANCE: Made his fth appearance of the season in Tuesday’s win at Houston, tossing 4.0 shutout innings (4H, 1BB, 4K)…matched his longest Major League outing (also 6/17/17 at Oakland)…was the longest relief appearance by the Yankees since Bryan Mitchell (4.0IP, 0R) on 8/8/17 at Toronto.

Amid the questioning in the West Wing on Friday afternoon, Haspel told White House aides she did not want her nomination to harm the CIA. She also feared unfair attacks on her own reputation, saying that she didn’t want to be the next Ronny Jackson, one official said. Jackson, Trump’s White House doctor, withdrew his nomination to become Veterans Affairs secretary following questions regarding alleged misconduct earlier in his career.